


Baby, It's Just You And Me {We've got a thing they can't shake}

by Fake_Brit



Series: All I need is the air I breathe and a place to rest my head [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe-General Hospital, Dual POV, F/M, I overuse parenthesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 06:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6842137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fake_Brit/pseuds/Fake_Brit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Clint deals with amnesia and Natasha stands by him<br/>(Or, the 2005!Jasam AU I couldn't help but write)<br/><i> “Don’t scream,” he tells her, and the only world she can come up with to describe his voice is, dead. His voice is usually the most expressive one she knows, be it when it’s a low, threatening whisper (rarely, an enraged growl) or when it’s dripping with raw honesty and gentleness and feeling. “It’s me.” </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby, It's Just You And Me {We've got a thing they can't shake}

**Author's Note:**

  * For [philindaisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/philindaisy/gifts).



> Title come from the Jasam soundtrack, it's just you and me

** To Ali, thank you for listening to my rambles and introducing me to Jasam. **

** Happy (early I know) Birthday, ILY **

** Anna **

** I Natasha **

She has not seen him or heard from him in days. Which wouldn’t be an issue, had Clint acted one bit like the Clint everyone in town is familiar with. He is like a blank slate, minus some traits that seem to be carved in his very being.

She doesn’t know how it went down the first time, but judging from the bits of it Clint has offered her from time to time, this is pretty much close to what he must’ve felt in the ‘90s; waking up and feeling like a blank page that is anything but blank to those who look from the outside.

Only, this time there had been no Bartons looking – analysing every inch of him – at him, expecting signs of someone who had become a mere ghost, alive only in their memories.

No, this time Natasha had been the one waiting for his eyes to open.

When they did, the same shade of blue that has witnessed her at her worst, (Her daughter’s name pounds in her head like a drum, sometimes – and she feels his arms, wrapping around her, anchoring her, as his voice tries to make its way through her screams. Her daughter is gone, her mind echoes like the word has gotten stuck in there, gone, gone, gone. Her throat burns more with each syllable that leaves her lips in a broken, hoarse loop. It’s a lie. Stop lying and take me to her, Clint. I wanna see her, now. His only answer is a tighter hold on her arms and a kiss in her hair, soft as all the promises he’d made to her – and her baby) something within her clenched.

They were the same shade of blue, but it looked like it had somehow been toned down a notch – his stare was the same, even. And yet, her mind muttered, its tone grim and stormy and everything she’d hoped to catch a break from, it was different, too. As though something had been ripped away, her mind went on. She’d shaken it off and asked, “You feeling okay, Clint?”

His only response had been another question. One much, much drearier. “Who are you?”

And that, Hawkeye, is a long ass story, she had murmured to herself half tiredly, before her mouth opened and details had spilled forth.

-:-

“Have you seen Clint?” she asks Kate while worry churns inside of her. She hopes for a simple answer in a breath, trying to focus on where each alternative might lead instead of thinking – again, over and over, until her memory allows her to (to her grave, she is sure) – about Clint looking at her and not seeing her.

“Wasn’t he supposed to be on a cruise with you?” Kate asks, and it’s like the simple act of asking planted the doubt in her head.

Looks like luck has yet again decided to march against her.

Natasha sighs, before telling Kate about the seizures, the drug he’d taken, the headaches, everything.

As soon as her words reach her ears, Clint’s sister drops her casual curiosity and focuses her gaze, now somehow colder, distant and yet also steadier, on her. She doesn’t offer any empty word of reassurance before saying, “We need to find him,” and Natasha is grateful. Emotional, albeit tearful pep talk would shatter her resolve completely. Her best chance of success is to ignore the storm she’s harbouring within. Her emotions have always been a wild thing, either dragging her down into flames until nothing remained but smoke or placing her so high she was bound to fall down eventually, which is why she’s always careful to keep them hidden, as though they were a separate entity if compared to herself, far away from her mind and body.

As good as she is at keeping her emotions locked far away from her job and stressful situations like this, she cannot deny that anything along the lines of, “Take it easy, Nat. It’ll be okay,” would have sent her into a panic. Especially considering that Kate is anything but close to done.

They have already started moving towards the door when she elaborates on the urgency her previous sentence had eluded. “It could be linked an aneurysm,” and, Nat fills in to herself, you have no idea how the hell that may affect the injuries Clint has already sustained.

Keep moving, you’ve got to keep moving, she chants silently until the words and their meanings blur into one another, like the faded colours of a piece of cloth that has been worn for years.

In the back of her head, the words Kate used pound in synch with each step her feet take, and she ignores all the possible scenarios her brain tries to throw at her. The last time she tried to get into the details of a trauma, she nearly died.

Find him, is the only thought she allows herself to cling to.

-:-

** II Clint **

The photos he’s staring at mean nothing. He thought that, maybe, somehow, staring at moments of his life until he could draw them and his eyes burn would drag something – anything, his mind moans desperate and traitorous – out of the mess his brain has become (again, apparently) and make him feels like Clint Carter wasn’t some sort of myth. He had hoped so much that when he’d arrived to the Bartons’ house he had begun shaking like a leaf in the harsh wind.

He is lost and kind of ashamed and confused – has been since he left Natasha and the hospital behind, (and the related nausea; unease wasn’t that easy to shake off) but he thought this would get him to something. Somewhere his emotions didn’t feel like a storm ready to wreak havoc, where he could makes sense of this mess.

(Actually, as much as he would like to punch himself for it now, he hoped. And yet—)

Here he is now, eyes trained, hands fisted out of rage, jaw locked and absofuckinglutely no glimmer of anything even remotely close to a memory. He doesn’t know how long he stands in from of the chimney holding—no, grabbing a photo. He just knows that, no matter which great instincts Natasha had mentioned, he misses Harold and Edith coming up behind him.

“Clint,” the woman who is supposed to be his mother and feels like a stranger but isn’t seems very surprised to see him standing there. (Nat – where the hell has that come out of? – had told him about his complicated relationship with the Bartons, but living it first-hand feels weird(er)) “What are you doing here?”

He’s also been told that he doesn’t like lying, (although this particular titbit of info confuses him even more because, which mob enforcer dislikes lies?) so his mouth shapes the truth. “I don’t remember anything,” and he sees his parents’ faces split open, worry tumbling outward – and, wait a minute, is his father smiling? What the actual fuck?

“It’s a good thing,” he says, voice slightly euphoric. “You’re here, and you aren’t working for Jack anymore – this could finally be the chance to get back to your family. Think about it, Clint. It’s all we’ve ever wanted for you.”

The tone his father is using sets something off. He’s sure Harold means what he’s just said, but for some reason he is not entirely able to grasp (which only deepens the frustration that has been running through him ever since he realised that looking at his own ID was like looking at a stranger’s – he’s really tired of this never-ending hunt for clues he’s lost. He wants them back. Wants control back) he knows that his words aren’t as sincere as his conviction of them.

His mother supports his hunch albeit unintentionally. “Stop it, Harold,” she hisses at her husband, never tearing her eyes away from Clint’s. When she speaks again, her voice rises, and so does the sadness in it. “While I share your father’s dislike of Jack Thompson, I also know that he means a lot to you and that the life you lead is the life of your own choosing,” she stops and gulps in some air, as though going back to this discussion had procured her yet another physical (low, he assumes) blow.

He has a feeling this isn’t new and that what his mother has just said is not exactly what his father expected, (probably, if hadn’t gotten his memory wiped clean, he would be just as surprised) and yet there’s no comfort for him. If anything, though, he feels angry.He still has no idea who and what events they are referring to and, one way or another, the people in his life are standing here, expecting and wanting and yearning for someone that might as well be gone forever.

(Again— and they don’t see it, but they’re tearing him apart)

** III Natasha **

Kate had told her that he’d probably try to trace back his routine. If there’s anything about Clint she is sure of knowing, it’s that he likes to come to the penthouse – she’s almost thought of it as home, but it isn’t. 

Not to Clint. Not now – when he needs a quiet place.

Which is why, when her key turns into the lock, her breath is still in her lungs, expectation making it thick as it flutters with hope.

His hand is on her mouth before she is able to set foot inside, his arm curved around her neck – it all happens so fast she has no chance of stopping it. She’s never envied people who ended up on the receiving end of his skills. She has watched them thrash and twist and turn in his grip, begging and begging until they wheezed nonsensical words, squirm under his gun. She has felt their fear, often until it blossomed into hysteria, witnessed how little it swayed Clint’s decision to act.

“Don’t scream,” he tells her, and the only world she can come up with to describe his voice is, dead. His voice is usually the most expressive one she knows, be it when it’s a low, threatening whisper (rarely, an enraged growl) or when it’s dripping with raw honesty and gentleness and feeling. “It’s me.”

She had known his instincts would kick in, if he felt cornered, which is part of the reason she hoped he would be here. As frustrated as he’s feeling right now, running into people who might either want to talk business or shack him up and drag him to the PCPDwould’ve surely triggered his reflexes and thus only deepened their current (already huge, already overwhelming) amount of trouble.

He lets her go and, along with air, relief courses through her, making her light-headed. He’s here and he’s okay. Thank God.

“Kate had a hunch—about you coming here,” she says, her voice still a little breathless. She doesn’t elaborate and chooses to focus on him, instead. His eyes are a mix of storminess and cleanness and as sharp as blades, all at the same time, his muscles clearly tense. Not good. “How are you feeling?”

He doesn’t look at her when he mutters a court, “I don’t know,” and tosses his keys on the desk, where a money-filled duffel bag is sitting, open and heavy and full of possibilities that scare the crap out of her.

“You remembered where the safe was,” a breath that barely parts her lips, hope beating beneath every word, try as she might to keep it quiet and still because it means nothing (but it could mean everything)

He’s quick to deny, stomping over her thinly-grown, jittery hope. “No,” and his head shakes, snapping like something wild and lost, sad and angry. “I just knew where to look for it,” the last bit sags downward, a whisper that isn’t even held upright by anger and frustration, as though Clint himself had still, somehow, against any odd he might have set, raged and hoped and prayed for his hands to have moved because of a memory being half buried somewhere inside of him.

“And I found all this,” his hands start moving, fingers jutting upwards as he talks, details of his work tools coming out – and his anger and helplessness flash at each word he utters. “You weren’t kidding when you said my work was dangerous.”

Yeah, she sighs to herself, like a crumpled leaf. Neither were you, when you tried to push me away. Learned from the best. Aloud, she asks, her voice completely unshaken, “What are you gonna do?”

“I’m leaving,” is a quiet, simple phrase. “I can’t stay here. I’m not the same person who murders for a living on a behalf of a guy who doesn’t ring a bell to me—and I don’t want to be that,” his voice isn’t loud, but somehow his animosity makes it sound like a thunderclap, and it is also so, so sad. 

She almost opens her mouth to do something—yell, throw a tantrum, threaten him. Anything.

He’s too good at anticipating people, though, so his finger snaps up to stop her before she has even decided what it is that she wants to do; hear me out, Natasha, it pleads. “And those bitter people who are supposed to be my parents?” he laughs a cold, dry, dead laugh. “Not very inspiring, are they?”

Trying to stop him is a reflex, “you can’t just skip town, Clint,” you can’t just give up. Not on yourself.

“If what you’ve told me about what I do is true, I have enemies,” he reasons, dark and practical and grim. “I can’t defend myself here. Not like this,” he adds, and there’s something in that tone that has her heart lurching up in her throat and her skin crawling.

“What about me?” she asks, soft and low and broken. “You may not remember it right now, but,” her next words surprise Natasha herself. Looks like the lash she’s kept around her emotions all this time has finally snapped loose, its shreds similar to a ghost reaching blindly into nothingness. “You love me. I wanna help you,” her voice snaps, and she marvels at how quick it is, how simple. “Please,” she begs in a whisper and it tastes like tears, like a quake.

Clint’s own emotions aren’t so very controlled, she sees it in his slightly bowed head. “I don’t,” his voice stops and kick-starts like a misplaced, uncovered wire. “I don’t wanna lead the life I found here.” Another pause follows, and then he finally picks up enough courage to look at her. His eyes may be gazing upwards, searing into hers, but his voice has lowered, and so has any shield he might have tried to put up until now. “I don’t wanna be the man,” a beat, a break and silence, “that you fell in love with,”

(here it is, the tear that will echo and pound and shadow every sound she’ll ever hear for the rest of her life: her own heart shattering mutely on the inside. On the outside, though, she’s trying to stay on her feet as her world is being rocked violently into chaos; her insides burn, tear after tear, as new scars pile upon old ones.)

** IV Clint **

Natasha’s plea rushes past his hears. He hears her, but it’s like a distant, unfiltered buzzing. On some level, he gets what she is going through; her eyes, flashy and big and so tremendously deep, are like a pool of swirling emotions. And he knows how quickly all those feelings can flame up and then go out into the smoky blackness of exhaustion.

Nevertheless, he also knows that trying to fit into Clint Carter’s shoes right now would drive him beyond madness. It’d be like trying to ignore how familiar it feels to tighten his fingers around the barrel of a gun, how normal is the first word he associates to metal pressing hard against skin.

(It infuriates him; and he wants to rage and rage and rage, but that would mean giving in, and he can’t trust himself to do that; he won’t)

“You don’t get it,” he ends up saying, all these things he can’t give in to and then act on pressed into the words, sharpening them.He walks to the couch, feeling like a bomb and not wanting it, feeling, feeling, feeling, and wanting to run. He picks up a photo in which there’s Natasha (Tasha, is murmur, a ghost. It is something, and he cannot place it) and there’s himself smiling, loving, existing. (he wants it) “I don’t know who this is,” he stops and the next word he breathes is a bullet, lethal and fast and everything he cannot put out. “Okay?” His head turns away from Natasha and her red hair, fluttering above her shoulders like an omen of even more messed up situations. He’s looking at the stairs and the furniture (so sparse and carefully chosen and so glaringly foreign) and anything but her, when he says, anger and fear still driving words and movements out of him, “I don’t know who lives here,”

The gun is in his hand without even realising he’d gone for it, familiar and secure and known (he wants to rebel, to drop it, to recoil, but it stays in place, firm and trustworthy and loyal. It is weird and comforting and a million other things he is afraid of naming)

He’s still talking about how he’s done things since he showed up here, still trying to get away, “How can this,” the gun in his hand staggers a bit, “make me good and gentle, huh?”

Natasha rebuts as soon as his lips stop moving. “You’re confused—”

See, this is what you were trying to avoid. He cuts her off, precise and abrupt at the same time, as though he’s calculated it. Anger is a wave inside of him, and it is coming back up, vengeful and unstoppable. “Like hell I am, Natasha. You want to know what I am?” his voice hits its loudest peek and then crumbles back down to a murmur, “I’m dangerous and I need to get somewhere my instincts won’t have me shoot someone because that’s what my first response to problems is, okay?” 

He’s on the brink of saying more, so close to trying and getting out of here without wreaking her too, when the his head takes the possibility away and starts pounding. 

Natasha closes the tendril of distance between them as soon as she notices his grimace. “Another headache?” she inquires. “Have you eaten something, lately?”

Teeth gritted, pain blinding him, he manages a laboured, “I don’t know,”

“You should stay here,” her voice trembles. “I can order something in,” she adds, trying to keep her voice even. He can see it in the way her body is keeping extremely still. “Please,” the word breaks in half as she utters it, and yet Natasha doesn’t cry.

Ever since he woke up and greeted her with a groggy, “Who are you,” in lieu of whatever she had hoped for, Natasha has not shed one single tear. He has no idea why, but the thought makes his stomach roll over with nausea. 

(Some part of him, though, manages to acknowledge that the ground under his feet has ever so slightly shifted and the vibration has had him stumble, his balance mismatched. And, as metaphorical as it may’ve been, it left his skin crawling with unease)

** V Natasha **

Natasha is still close to Clint, her hands pressed into his clammy skin, her heart roaring into her chest, (please, please, please, do not be anything serious, it says fast and high and throbbing. Please, please, please, it beats into her veins) when Kate bursts through the door, her breath quick and her words frantic. “Thank God,” she exhales, coming to a halt. “We have to get you to the hospital,” her voice stops just enough for Natasha to notice that Clint’s muscles have locked into stillness, cold and stone-like beneath her hands, at the mention of the hospital, and then it picks up again, as though it’s on the run from something ominous. “Like I’ve already told Nat here, your symptoms are very likely to be linked to an aneurysm, and if we don’t get it checked out, it could cause you all sorts of problems, Clint.”

Clint’s opinion, however, doesn’t waver one inch. He separates himself from her, turns on his feet and is almost out of the door – into whatever safe place he’s been dying to chase – before a pained growl makes its way into his mouth and tears it open. It is not tremendously loud or prolonged as one might think sudden pain would be, but it freezes both her and Kate to the spot.

They see him grimacing as he stops, crunching down to his knees, and they know. Whether he wishes to or not, Clint will set foot in the hospital.

-:-

“You can’t go in there now,” the nurse sighs, her voice sinking as though the phrase were somehow stuck on her tongue and she ached to get rid of it.

Natasha knows it. Hell, she might be the reason that phrase sounds like the nurse’s own name by now, but the thought of pacing – or worse yet, sitting as she glares at the wall (which, just for the record, is so white it’s making her nauseous) – isn’t exactly relaxing. Truthfully, it makes her antsy. She wants to do something—has wanted to do something to help Clint out ever since they realised he needed help, and she doubts sitting and fidgeting and glaring will benefit her amnesiac boyfriend.

Kate is filling the forms the nurse handles her, her brows pinched toward each other, her face set in concentration.

“I paged Harold – he’s on his way,” the nurse chirps, and Natasha feels the overwhelming desire to smash something. 

She has nothing against Harold per se, except the fact that Clint is going to lose it if he sees that he is in a hospital and being treated by his father.

Which, as sparse as her medical knowledge is, cannot be anywhere near close a good thing for someone who, a) is quick to react when he feels threatened (and basically deadly, but that’s a part of the story she hopes won’t gain importance); and b) dealing with a brain-related injury that could expand its effects.

She has tried to stay positive ever since their lives plummeted into this tunnel, she has really, really tried. In spite of that, though, the arrow that rests in the hollow her neck seems to prickle her flesh. She feels like it’s pointing – leading her – towards trouble.

Her gut is telling her, roaring at her, actually, to sprint into a run, to get to Clint now. It is telling her to knock the hell out of that arrow and set it free to take down whatever it is that is wrong, right this minute.

(She hopes her gut is somehow hitting a wall, this time)

It isn’t, she discovers, her face pale and fingers kind of clammy as she holds a gun and points it at Harold.

** VI Clint **

He’s still trying to distance himself from his father and the syringe he is holding, ignoring the limited space the hospital bed offers, when he notices Natasha’s presence. She’s holding a gun, her fingers steady and tight around the trigger, and she looks ready to actually shoot someone.

(I’m good at shooting, you know. He hears – remembers? – her say suddenly. I would be fantastic back up. Her narrowed eyes flash at him, frustration and helplessness almost blinding him)

He blinks as though he’d just hit his head. What in the holy hell?

His father seems to have ignored his previous attempt at getting away and keeps stammering on, in what should a calming tone, but is actually unnerving as fuck, “It’s for your safety, son. You just had another seizure,” his own frustration at Clint’s unwillingness to cooperate shining brightly in the way he’s closing in on him.

Clint doesn’t back down, though, his own stubborn streak sinking its paws into the ground. You wanna speak yourself into exhaustion, oh-dearest-father? Have at it, but there’s no chance in burning hell I’m buyin’ your blabbering.

His voice has reached its limit as far as calm is concerned; he’s not exactly been shouting his lungs out, but he can feel this state of semi calm he is in as it begins to quiver and tremble and crack. Beneath, his nerves are starting to tingle, as though they had just shaken off the slumber of medicine and they are eager to stay awake and feel things and burn because of effort.

Harold hasn’t shut his mouth yet, his lips heavy with medical jargon Clint has no idea what to make of—amnesia or not, he suspects this isn’t that much of a rare occurrence, but he sure as hell doesn’t find that comforting. 

“Let him go,” Natasha cuts in, her voice cold and solid and sharp. He’s gotta admit, she does look dangerous with a gun in her hand and her expression downright murderous. 

And something tells him that this is not just about the looks of it. He doesn’t remember her shooting, but the way her hand is curved around the barrel, the way her finger is just leaning on the trigger, not exaggerating on the pressure—this is the stance of somebody who’s touched and handled a lot of guns.

Harold (calling him anything else feels like giving him more than he deserves) relents, despite his spurring warnings at him. Natasha looks like she might ditch the gun and just kill him with her bare hands. “You can’t even man up enough to actually help your son for once,” she hisses as one her hands helps him get out of the restraints he’d been placed in.

(He cannot deny that relief overwhelms him when she approaches, her gun still in reach, her expression melted into gentleness. “C’mon, let’s get out of here,”)

-:-

He is free. Free to get on his feet and out of here (as in, both the hospital and the goddamned town—finally) and he owes that to Natasha. It’s not much to go by, but it is certainly more than a simple, flee like a shadow, Clint. Flee, flee, flee.

He feels lighter, his head already mapping and planning and on the road.

He can almost taste the air outside, its scent tingling in his nose. Sea aroma, seagulls overhead. It’s like the comforting touch he’s been unconsciously seeking from the minute he realised his life was nothing but shambles.

“Clint,” someone calls out to him and all he’s been planning and shaping dissolves as he turns mid-step to put a face to the urgent, almost panicked voice. 

The blonde-headed man he finds doesn’t introduce himself, but a shiver crawling up his spine is enough of a clue for Clint to know who it is. His face is hard, but at same time twisted in stress, as though any effort he might have made had landed him nowhere near the intended goal. “We’ve got a problem,”

Jack Thompson is looking at him like a man lost at sea who has just touched land after uncountable instants spent desiring of sneaking even just a glimpse at it.

Clint almost feels bad when he cuts him off, the cheeriness he’d previously felt now completely gone as though it had never actually come to be. “Forget it,” he almost growls, “I’m not working for you anymore, okay?”

He leaves his former boss and best friend standing there, staring at him as he gets into the elevator and physically away for good, he hopes.

-:-

In the end, he does not leave. It isn’t exactly what one would call a choice, though. It’s more of an attempt to not let any kind of chance he might have at remembering go to waste.

Natasha is part of the reason he hasn’t bolted yet; she has been by his side since his eyes opened to the world and found no recollection of it in his head to draw from.

Her support hasn’t wavered even once. He remembers seeing her when he woke up, the hospital bed digging harshly into his semi-numb back. She had sat (been sitting, he amends to himself in a mumble. Knowing her, she would have a limb cut off rather than moving away from him and his bed before he woke up) on the chair, knees hugged to her chest as tightly as fatigue allowed. He remembers the way her fingers snuck into his, silent and light and cool against his half-closed, tight hand.

“I’d defend you with my life,” she’d said, later, her gun tucked away like a jewel in her pocket, her eyes still brightened by fire. “You did the same for me, back when I—” her voice had gone down suddenly like a fire turning to mere sparkles when it had threatened to turn everything standing in its path to coal and ashes and screaming ghosts, unheard and open-mouthed and bone-chilling, only moments earlier.

The question his throat kept caged in had found no answer, though. When you what, Natasha, he wonders even now. What happened to you?

He shakes his head furiously, as though the movement actually helped him dissipate the heavy fog of doubts that his recent, undamaged memories are filled with.

Clint has been having moments like this one more and more frequently as of late: he feels as though the unsaid events he forgot are within his chances of grasping, like a perfectly planned game of hide-and-seek that has gone beyond frustrating, and then dissolve into the dust of something fallen and broken and ancient and unrepairable. 

He doesn’t know how long the ruin will only be a metaphor. 

Fear, he startles into realising it, has been asleep inside of him all this time; ever since his name became a word he could link no face to, and now it is starting to stir and yawn and shake itself awake.

(Fear is gurgling to its senses into someone he had been told to be fearless and he feels it into the breaths and the steps he takes, and it unsettles him; it will end up roaring and all Clint knows is, all I want is not to plummet to my knees. I want to stand on my feet and walk and run miles. I want to win)

** VII Natasha **

Clint has been staying at the penthouse for almost three weeks now, his memory still unreachable, and his aneurysm still in place. 

He hasn’t tried to get to know Jack or Maria or anyone he’d once been close to. It breaks her heart not to find him crunched in front of Michael every now and then, not to see little Carter asleep in the crook of his shoulder, a trail of drool on his shirt or a tiny hand grabbing a button.

Her heart drops, still, always, relentlessly. He would’ve been a fantastic dad. She sighs, trying to keep the sadness at bay.

Faith, her heart whispers weakly as it beats, have faith.

Yeah, she scoffs. As though a con like me has ever had any reason at all so far. Dick (adoptive) dad: check. The illegitimate – is that definition still a thing? – child I’d slowly warmed up to: taken brutally away before she’d even fully breathed. The man I had found a partner in: currently a literal shadow of himself, in any sense.

Not a very faith-inducing round of life lottery, huh?

She clutches the small arrow at her neck, as to steady herself. 

Natasha Romanoff doesn’t give up, girl.

She breathes, slowly and steadily, through her nose, her hand flattening, palm inward, against the metal. It’s cool. Calming, even.

-:-

Clint comes home one evening, his eyes shadowed and his mouth set into a thin, whitened line, his jaw completely still.

It’s not new to her: whenever a job presented difficulties Clint tried to keep everything concealed from the people who weren’t directly in the business. She remembers how that same look had seemed to be carved into his skin, his muscles frozen into hardness, when they had believed Michael to be dead.

She has enough experience at reading people (perks of growing up to deceive, as Ivan had drilled into her little lost head back in the day) to catch every single shift his mood goes through, every movement, as subtle as it may be, however quickly and controllably it might happen. 

“I need to leave,” he mutters. Gruff and low and relaxed; so Clint-like she almost believes that he’s talking about a job-related errand. Key word being, almost. His voice is dim, as if smothered, and empty. Had this been work related, his voice would’ve run over the words, hastily assembling them into a sentence, his mind already focused on what he had to do.

She doesn’t react. She would like to, her nerves burning with impulses, stop him, stop him, they urge, chanting beneath her skin. Nevertheless, she also knows that he wouldn’t ask unless he had reason.

She tries anyway, her words muffled and her emotions shining, but out he goes.

He’d said, “The only reason I like my life right now is you,” 

(she does not blame him, but the wave of grief that hits as the door closes, has knees buckle and the sobs she had been fighting since he first landed on a hospital bed are wretched from her throat, wide as the sign or claw that cuts her skin and paints it red—and smears her word in grey)

** VIII Clint **

He ends up wandering through town, his muscles tight as his legs speed up and fear keeps him company, lonely and warm, while whispering sweetly into his ear. Let me in, Clint. Come on, it is time you will be so kind as to let me in.

He needs to keep running, block after block, mile after mile. As he speeds, his thoughts are nothing but a blur; they mix and fumble and slip away, quick and silent (their words gone) and roaring.

It is draining; his head feels as though it contains a thousand drums, all beating to the same tune at once.

His step halt, his breath catches in his throat, and he tries closing his eyes and pressing a palm to the strangely clammy skin of his eyelids. Rubs against it, as to smooth over the reverberation of the drums, which he doesn’t seem to be able to escape from.

A tortured sigh wrenches itself free from his lips, his brow furrowed.

A name explodes in echoes in his head and he feels his heart sink, as though it were in free fall mode and shrink as though it had been hung to dry long ago and were now trying to sputter along its last beat. Peggy.

He remembers holding a baby (“Can I—can I call her Peggy, like your grandmother?” “Yeah, I’m sure she’d like that. She always said that the heart has a long memory, y’know,”) and thinking, this is unfair. This baby girl doesn’t deserve this. Nor does Jack. And Nat, his throat had closed and burned and trembled. What am I gonna tell her? H o w am I going to tell her?

He remembers holding her and seeing her in his hands, so fragile and strangely peaceful; her lips and her tiny nose and her eyes and her hair – all Jack- and her face, an exact replica of Natasha’s when she slept.

(Clint remembers holding and – good God, how have I pulled through this? How has Nat? – losing his daughter. )

His feet move, a destination clear somewhere in his butchered mind, and he barely notices.

-:-

“Your mom,” he mumbles towards the headstone, down on his knees, the grass damp on his trousers, “she is a force of nature, kiddo.” He stops, pain gnawing at him like the blades of a pair of scissors. It’s unexpected – ish. He’s grown to care for her, after all.

“She has been great to me, memory or no memory,” he murmurs so quietly that his voice blurs into the breeze. “And I couldn’t be more grateful. I promise you, I’m gonna make sure she’s okay, alright?” he doesn’t know whether or nothe’s crying as his voice collapses on the last few words, but it feels like everything in him – tendons, muscles. Literally everything – aches and howls and rips on itself. It is like is skin is about to fall off, but it feels like something with no ending.

 

He must crying, he thinks. Why in hell would he feel so empty otherwise?

-:-

The door to the penthouse opens, and Natasha looks taken aback by seeing him standing there, no frown or uncertainty in his stance.

“I remembered holding Peggy,” he says, eyes not quite meeting hers, his voice barely above a whisper.

Natasha’s chest heaves, but her lips don’t move one inch.

Clint swallows around the lump stuck in his throat, before saying, “Nat,” his voice slightly higher and (he hopes) not as shaky. “The only way I knew I had any concrete chance at staying here—with you—was by asking you to let me go, and you have.” 

He has no idea who moves first, but his arms curl around her and her fingers press into his back, both of them too stunned to utter a word.

Maybe, he whispers to himself as his arm moves upward to sweep a red hair strand behind her left ear, this could be the start of something, finally. Not the end, not a ripped middle.

(He kisses her, later. It’s slow, tentative brushing, at first. And then Natasha’s arms disentangle and move up towards his bare neck, and her lips are the ones that seem to not be able to tolerate air. She leans toward him, her grip tightening, and from there on, there’s nothing but movements and teasing and proximity; his instincts take over and he feels it. Her content sigh in the crook of his shoulder, this is home)

** IX Natasha **

The meds he’d been taking stop working and the only solution doctors suggest he has seems to shock the hell out of everyone. “Calling Bobbi is not a good idea, Natasha,” Jack chides, when she tries to pry details out of him. “They share a history and it is monumental,” he stops, as though words had failed him. “But it ended—and it wasn’t one bit pretty.” The tone he is using is frank, void of any scheming that may be hidden in what he is saying, and she gets the hint: it is not my place to tell you about Bobbi. It isn’t anybody’s place but Clint’s.

She respects that. There’s a call to make, though; and what is at stake is not something trivial. She isn’t opening an old wound back out of insecurities or pettiness. Clint could die.

(The note with Bobbi’s number sits in her pocket for days, neatly folded and nearly forgotten, as Jack’s grimace gets stuck in her head every time her eyelids drop; it said, this will blow in your face, Nat. In the end, though, she calls her)

-:-

Clint stops her the first time, glaring as soon as his head snaps up from the landline phone, “What are you doing?”

The explanation slips away from her in a trembling tone. “She could save you—Dr. Morse. There’s a surgery that could save you, Clint.” Her voice is steely, deadly set. Don’t be an ass.

“I remember who Bobbi is, Nat,” he says, low and sad resigned. “This won’t happen.”

Her head moves almost robotically, drawing half a circle in the air, red dangling at the edge of her vision, as wavy and bright as the fire in her words. “Like hell it won’t, Hawkeye,” she hisses, her eyes crinkled.

Clint had stopped once he’d gotten close enough to prevent her from dialling Bobbi, but her tone seems to thwart whatever had anchored him to the floor and he snaps into motion, his hands clenching and unclenching as though they were following an unheard tune; his voice is equally hard, his own tone raw and explosive. “You may be used to eating men while they’re still breathing, Widow, but you should know that I am used to fighting back,” it is not a tsunami and the tide does not break them apart, but Natasha knows that they won’t be able to stay in this limbo forever—not without dropping down, eventually. She sees it: splintered bones, raw skin and empty eyes; her stomach drops and the ground is nowhere in sight.

(Clint does know as well. She can see it in his eyes, huge and ocean blue and truthful to a fault)

-:-

There is a fact no one would ever dare deny about Clint Carter: he’s a stubborn ass ninety percent of the time.

What people seem to forget, however, is that Natasha Romanov isn’t that easy to talk out of things, either.

Therefore, here she is; despite his sulking and glaring and any other attitude that screams this idea pisses me off he is capable of conveying, she meets with Bobbi in café one morning, her stomach in knots as her fingers tap rhythmically on her hip while she heads toward a table. (It’s a nervous habit she thought she’d shaken off, something she used to fall into doing without even noticing, back when she and Ivan had to wait a specific moment to con the hell out of some poor, well-meaning dumbass—he hated it, and she enjoyed pissing him off to end)

The café isn’t very crowded: there is the usual line of morning people, looking bleary-eyed and asleep on their feet, as though they had been pulled out of bed by God-knows-what too damn early, waiting for something to eat, a couple of busy tables where chitchat flows in hushed tones.

The blonde-haired woman that is sitting at the table near the window doesn’t say a world, at first. She just nods as Natasha mutters, “Thank you for meeting me here, Doctor Morse,” as she slides down her seat.

Her fingers keep tapping, but they have moved to the plastic table, and the melody they seem to be following is much more upbeat, but her movements have gotten pretty much out of her control, as though everything she’s been trying to bottle up lately had started leaking out. (Probably true, she muses, her voice thin and fading—No, she growls. Not now, vocal chords. Keep it together.)No coffee for you, self. 

Bobbi’s – referring to her by name, at least to herself, is almost a reflex – voice is low, fatigue turning every word into a drawl. “Don’t mention it, Natasha,”

Neither of them seem to know how to breach the subject, apparently. Natasha knows why it is so on her part: Edith has been pretty direct about it ever since they had to choose between pills (which she’d picked because Clint was dead set on no brain poking, but she just couldn’t sit around and watch him pass away. His stubborn streak be damned) and surgery, the only chance they have is doing something or Clint will die.

As for Bobbi’s reasons, everything Natasha has heard – mostly from Jack, although she has been told Peggy would’ve been a great, unbiased source – hints that they are somehow linked to how Clint meddled in the process that led Maria to Jack, his subsequent adoption of Michael and Clint’s choice of work.

Conclusion: they both care for Clint too much to just come out with what’s been unsaid ever since they finally managed to get in touch.

Finally, Bobbi is the one who manages to break the ice. Or rather, crack it straight open. “What’s going on with Clint?” she asks, without one hint of doubt as to the reason she – or both of them are, for that matter – is here.

For the first time in what feels like forever, Natasha smiles ever so slightly. Figures Clint had a type.

Something tells her that, whether or not Bobbi actually succeeds at helping Clint, this is a first meeting that will affect her life for a long time. Besides, judging from the way a tired sigh follows a headshake, blond waves tripping over her shoulder, Natasha thinks it will lead to something magnificent.

“Well, you know the guy: when it’s about helping others, he’s all in all the time—we both can attest to that, I assume.”

Bobbi nods, her eyes suddenly glassy. (And the same, Natasha murmurs to herself in a grey, shaky whisper, can surely be true of my own)

“Let me guess,” Bobbi throws in, her tone fond even if slightly exasperated, “the help you’re talking about is for him, and he’s being kind of difficult, isn’t he?”

“Yep,” she confirms trying not to let her emotions cloud her flippancy. This is not the time of the year for crazy expenses, Nat. You already have Steve and his school to think of, a shrink would eat up your savings.

Bobbi’s head shakes again, her own lips reluctantly pulled up. “Typical Clint,” she mutters, but it is light-hearted and affectionate.

“Alright, Nat – I can call you that, right? – we have got a surgery to plan and a patient to get on board. You in for the challenge?” her arms extends, and despite her playful tone, seriousness is shining in her eyes.

Hope has been trying to take root in her heart ever since Clint came back to the penthouse, and it looks like now it might finally stick. She takes the other woman’s hand and shakes it. “Hell yes, I am, Bobbi.”

** X Clint **

In the end, it all goes to hell. Strangely enough, hell isn’t strictly related to the ticking bomb that has gotten cosy in his brain.

The train gets derailed and his headaches come back to bite him in the ass, seizures in tow. Talk about shitty timing, why don’t you?

He, Natasha and Bobbi end up wandering around, rubble and debris echoing in their wake. All the while, his head pounds, and pounds and pounds, an unstoppable drum, grim and bone shattering, as a part of him tries to grit his teeth through it and whispers, we need to get out of here.

He feels as though he might fall to pieces, but restlessness screams in his bloodstream, a grey song of quick beats that gets louder and louder as who knows which units of measurement tick by unmarked.

Bobbi and Nat – the nickname sticks to his vocal chords without even noticing by now – insist on stopping to check out his injuries, concern dripping from their tones like fresh paint from a brush.

(Natasha tries to downplay it, her gaze skittish, as though fixing it over something physically hurt her, and her voice calm. Icy, even. But he notices anyway.)

-:-

He had known, somewhere deep down, this wasn’t going to last.They are still discussing what to do, their tones overlapping each other, worry shadowing every word, when Natasha’s voice reaches its highest note and then breaks into a thousand sharp, little pieces.

(Bobbi, ever the personification of quick thinking, is in full doctor mode. Her words are solely focused on getting him to let her check him out, but fear has creeped into her eyes; the lie trembles in there, but he crushes it, his own narrowing in annoyance. You have never been good at lying, Bob. )

“What’s wrong, Natasha?” his hand brushes her shoulder, his voice a light tickle on his lips.

Her voice wavers imperceptibly like a leaf in a light spring breeze. “Today,” she sighs, her gaze low, her words barelytouching his ears, dull and tired, “our little girl would’ve turned one.”

He says, “I’m sorry,” her hand feels warm through his jacket, reaching blindly, as though the bare mention of what happened could have tripping.

He hopes his leather-cladded shoulder won’t let her fall.

-:-

(In the end, her hand is the one that anchors him as the clock ticks his time away, merciless and unrelenting.

Her grip is soft and iron-like at the same time.

Her arm slung around his shoulder in the Hawaiian sun feels like home as her fingers sneak through his.

His squeeze is a quiet I love you, his lips fast above each one of her knuckles.

On the silent beach, they both feel at peace.

A storm may be lurking around the corner, but the Hawk and the Widow will face it, their heartbeats whisper. Together.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
